Reading Order
Xala Reading Order
Xala (1973) by Ousmane Sembène is a satirical novella — later adapted into one of Sembène's most celebrated films — that uses a powerful Senegalese businessman's sudden impotence on his wedding night as an extended metaphor for the failure of African independence. El Hadji Abdou Kader Bèye is a wealthy Dakar businessman and member of the Chamber of Commerce — a member of the new Senegalese elite that has replaced the French colonial administrators after independence. He takes a third wife in an ostentatious ceremony, demonstrating his wealth and power. On his wedding night, he discovers that he cannot perform sexually — he has been afflicted with the xala (a curse of impotence in Wolof, placed on him by a beggar he had dispossessed). His attempts to remove the xala — through traditional healers, through Islamic prayer, through a Moroccan businessman's marabout — all fail. His commercial empire collapses; his wives and daughter and friends abandon him; and the resolution, when the xala is lifted, is both physically humiliating and morally clarifying. Sembène's allegory is transparent: the xala is the impotence of the African bourgeoisie that replaced the colonial administration but reproduced all its structures of exploitation. El Hadji dispossessed the beggar by using colonial legal mechanisms to steal the man's land — just as the Senegalese independence did not redistribute land to those who had worked it but allowed a new elite to use the colonial machinery for their own enrichment. The cure for the xala requires El Hadji to submit to the public humiliation that his exploitation has deserved. Xala is the most precise fictional anatomy of what Fanon called 'the pitfalls of national consciousness,' and it has remained the definitive satirical account of the African independence failure.
Where to start
Xala — read it in one sitting if possible; it is a novella of about 120 pages and works best read as a sustained satirical argument. Sembène's film of the same name (1975) is equally important.
Complete Xala Book List
- 1Buy
Xala
Ousmane Sembène·1973·The novella — El Hadji's xala, his commercial collapse, and the satirical anatomy of the African bourgeoisie's impotence. - 2Buy
God's Bits of Wood (Les Bouts de Bois de Dieu)
Ousmane Sembène·1960·Sembène's masterpiece — the 1947-1948 railway workers' strike across Dakar and Bamako; a more complex and humanist account of Senegalese resistance to French colonialism. - 3Buy
The Wretched of the Earth
Frantz Fanon·1961·Fanon's anti-colonial theory — the 'pitfalls of national consciousness' that Xala dramatizes; the theoretical framework that Sembène's satire illustrates. - 4Buy
Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote
Ahmadou Kourouma·1998·Kourouma's satirical account of African dictatorship — the francophone companion to Xala; where Sembène is a satirical realist, Kourouma uses the griot tradition. - 5Buy
So Long a Letter
Mariama Bâ·1979·Bâ's Senegalese epistolary novel — the feminist companion to Xala from the same Senegalese tradition; women's suffering under the patriarchal culture that El Hadji's xala illuminates. - 6Buy
Devil on the Cross
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o·1982·Ngũgĩ's Gikuyu political satire — the East African parallel; the same neo-colonial capitalism in an allegorical register that parallels Sembène's satirical realism. - 7Buy
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
Ayi Kwei Armah·1968·Armah's Ghanaian novel of post-independence corruption — the anglophone West African companion; the same diagnosis of the new elite's betrayal of independence. - 8Buy
Season of Migration to the North
Tayeb Salih·1966·Salih's Sudanese anti-Heart of Darkness — the francophone African tradition's Arabic-language companion in the broader African literary tradition; postcolonial African male consciousness in a different register.
Xala — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Xala about?
Xala follows El Hadji Abdou Kader Bèye, a successful Senegalese businessman and member of the elite Chamber of Commerce in Dakar, just after Senegalese independence. On the day the novel begins, El Hadji is taking a third wife — an extravagant ceremony that displays his wealth. On his wedding night, he discovers he cannot perform sexually: he has been afflicted with the xala (a curse of impotence, from the Wolof). He hires a series of traditional healers and marabouts to cure him, spending the money he doesn't have. His commercial empire, which has been built on corruption and the manipulation of the colonial legal system, begins to collapse. His wives and daughter turn away from him; his fellow businessmen distance themselves. The resolution, when it comes, requires El Hadji to submit to public humiliation by the beggars he has exploited — a resolution that is both literally degrading and symbolically appropriate.
What is the allegorical meaning of the xala?
The xala — the curse of impotence — is Sembène's central metaphor for the impotence of the African bourgeoisie in post-independence Africa. El Hadji represents the class of African businessmen and politicians who replaced the French colonial administration after independence but did not change the structures of colonial exploitation: they used the same legal mechanisms to dispossess the same poor people, the same commercial networks to extract the same profits, the same class separation to maintain the same hierarchies. The xala is the punishment for this reproduction of colonialism under African management: El Hadji is impotent because his power is borrowed and false, because independence that doesn't redistribute land and wealth is not real independence. The beggar who placed the curse is El Hadji's victim — a man whose land El Hadji stole using colonial legal procedures — and only submitting to the beggar's judgment can lift it.
Who was Ousmane Sembène and why is he important?
Ousmane Sembène (1923-2007) is generally regarded as the father of African cinema as well as one of the most important African novelists of the twentieth century. He was born in Senegal, worked as a fisherman and dockworker (the experience behind God's Bits of Wood), emigrated to France, became a communist and trade unionist, and studied filmmaking in Moscow. He returned to Senegal and made a series of films (Black Girl/La Noire de..., 1966; Mandabi, 1968; Emitai, 1971; Xala, 1975; Ceddo, 1977; Camp de Thiaroye, 1988; Moolaadé, 2004) that are among the most important works in African cinema. He wrote his novels and made his films in both French and Wolof, insisting on the importance of addressing African audiences in their own languages — a position that parallels Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's decision to write in Gikuyu.
How does Xala relate to Fanon's analysis of post-colonial failure?
Xala is essentially a fictional illustration of the chapter in Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth titled 'The Pitfalls of National Consciousness,' in which Fanon predicted (in 1961, just after most African nations achieved independence) that the African national bourgeoisie would reproduce the structures of colonial exploitation under African management, lacking the technical knowledge and capital to genuinely transform the economy and settling for taking the colonists' place in the same system. El Hadji is exactly the figure Fanon predicted: a member of the Chamber of Commerce that was a French institution, now controlled by Senegalese businessmen who have simply replaced the French in the same exploitative function. Sembène's satire makes Fanon's theoretical prediction concrete and specific in a Senegalese context.
What should I read after Xala?
After Xala, Sembène's God's Bits of Wood (1960) is the essential companion in his fiction — a more complex and humanist work set in the 1947-1948 railway strike. His films are equally important: Xala (1975), the adaptation of this novella, and Moolaadé (2004), about female genital mutilation, are his two most celebrated. For francophone African literary companions, Kourouma's Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote and Mabanckou's Memoirs of a Porcupine are the most important. For Fanon's theoretical framework, The Wretched of the Earth is essential. For Mariama Bâ's feminist Senegalese complement, So Long a Letter (1979) is the indispensable companion.
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